The Sequel

Anna wakes up bound in the back of Pickens’s car. Pickens is driving. She studies the trees passing through the window while trying to make sense of what happened. She determines that Pickens knocked her out and drugged her. She wonders where he is taking her but decides that he is not “the murdering type” (229). He interrupts her thoughts, announcing he knows that she is awake. Then he starts talking about Rose Parker and how he connected Anna to Rose. He contacted the coroner in Rabun County where Rose supposedly died and made some discoveries. Anna insists that she isn’t Rose, and Perkins laughs. Finally, they reach their destination.

Perkins lets Anna out of the car. They’re in the woods. He takes out a shovel and demands that Anna lead the way to the bodies she buried at gunpoint. When they reach the spot, Perkins demands that she start digging. While she works, he records their conversation on his phone and explains how he figured out Anna’s story and what he wants from her. Not long ago, he received several messages from the women who bought the Parker house. They got a manuscript in the mail they believed was Evan’s and wanted to send to Rose. Evan had mailed the manuscript to a publishing house, but they didn’t send it back for years, as it had gotten lost. Perkins ignored the women’s messages but began searching for Rose. Eventually he met Jake and later learned of his death. Shortly thereafter, he saw Anna’s picture at a bookstore event and realized she was Rose. Then he read Evan’s manuscript and Jake’s book and discovered that Anna was in fact Dianna Parker. He now wants her to give him the money from Jake’s book sales or he’ll expose her for murder. He then demands that she confess on tape.

Anna realizes she has hit Rose’s coffin. She doesn’t tell Perkins and instead tells him to check the battery on his phone before she confesses the truth. When he looks down at his phone, she strikes him with the shovel repeatedly, pushes him into Rose’s grave, buries him, and leaves with his gun and phone.

In Perkins’s car, Anna heads north. She stops in Albany, gets a motel, and sleeps soundly.

Anna arrives at her old house. A woman with red hair opens the door and introduces herself as Betty. Anna introduces herself as Jake’s widow and explains that she came on her way to Middlebury to give Betty the signed copies of Jake’s book he’d promised her before he died. She pretends to have found them in his things after his death but was too heartbroken to mail them at the time. Betty is flattered and invites Anna in for coffee.

Over coffee, Betty’s partner Sylvia surfaces. Her rude behavior reminds Anna of someone she can’t place. Then Anna asks for a tour, saying she wants to see the last place Jake visited before his death. Jake had gone there to see Evan’s house about which he wrote in Crib. During the tour, Anna is surprised to see the same pineapple wall stencils and her parents’ rope bed. Anna wants to leave but has resolved herself to kill the women and find Evan’s manuscript. Suddenly, she feels “a breathtaking jolt of pain” when Betty hits her on the head and calls her Dianna (266).

Betty confronts Anna for all of the harm she’s called and her lack of guilt over her crimes. She holds a gun to Anna, but Sylvia suggests they call the cops instead. Betty dismisses Sylvia’s suggestion and continues her rant. She reveals that she is Patrick Bessette’s sister and blames Anna for murdering him and ruining her family’s life. When she received Evan’s manuscript in the mail, she and Sylvia read his and Jake’s books, discovering connections to the family who used to own the house and who she knew in childhood. She went to Anna’s book event and realized she was Dianna. She particularly understood the connection because Anna wrote about a rope bed that had secret compartments just like the bed in the house she and Syliva bought. Anna realizes that she got the whole story wrong and that these women were behind the other notes and manuscripts. When Betty mentions Patrick again, Anna calls him a rapist, setting Betty off. Anna withdraws Perkins’s gun, shoots her, and then shoots Sylvia.

From the hall, Anna observes Betty and Sylvia’s bodies in her parents’ old room. Then she goes in search of Evan’s manuscript. After she finds it, she creates a fire on the stove and flees the scene.

Anna returns to New York. She gets in touch with her realtors who help her finalize a sale. Then one night, she meets with Wendy about developing a paperback tour for her book and writing a sequel. Wendy encourages her writing, reminding her that this time she doesn’t have to write about her own story if she doesn’t want to. While walking afterwards, Anna thinks about what Wendy says and decides that she’s right. She can write anything that she wants, and she’s always loved fiction.